


But First We'll Live

by hallieCB3



Series: Random Rebel-Captain Stuff [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Guilt, Healing, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-23 03:25:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9638822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallieCB3/pseuds/hallieCB3
Summary: AU: One-shot story about Jyn and Cassian, and their post-Scarif perspective.





	1. Jyn

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this movie broke me since I got attached to these two – see? I'm no Jedi! I 've created attachments LOL – I've been thinking how these two could have survived and how they would keep being part of the Rebellion. I strongly suspected they would not make it after Scarif since they were nowhere to be seen around in the Original Trilogy, but one can hope, right? Just a one-shot drabble of one of the potential might-have-been situations between these two, using the cave idea brilliantly used by Alexander Freed in his Rogue One novelisation.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, material mentioned on this. All rights reserved to Lucasfilm.
> 
> EDIT: I liked this so I decided to add another chapter from Cassian perspective. Stay tuned!

So many years running from her past, from that cave she'd been abandoned in. But now she didn't feel like running away anymore.

Now she was embracing her fate, same as Cassian and her were holding on to each other on that beach. They were waiting for the worst to come, and hoping at the same time that someone else would finish what they'd started. Her eyes were filling up with tears as the horizon was getting brighter and brighter.

She woke up, with little beads of sweat covering her forehead. Again, the same bad dream.

There were restless waves crashing over the sand, while the green light of the Death Star tractor beam was about to obliterate the beach they were at.

She thought she would die that day in Scarif. But she didn't.

And yet, she was still in the same embrace. She looked aside and there was Cassian with her in that small bed, deeply asleep while he was still holding her, with his hand resting over her waist. Absentmindedly, she started softly tracing the skin on the back of his fingers.

It was real. She was alive. And so was he.

Pleasant memories of earlier that night started flooding her mind. They were way more real than the images from her nightmare. Their lack of clothes was enough evidence to prove the reality of it.

They went to Scarif on a suicide mission, and never thought they would make it alive back to the Rebellion.

But they did.

_"I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad."_

Of course she wasn't. Either for own choice or for other reasons, all her life she had been abandoned by those she thought would be with her for longer. That's why she had shut herself to the outside world in a cave, her feelings, her hopes and fears: everything was protected deep inside her soul.

_"Welcome home"_

But then Rogue One happened. These rag-tag team of people that met just by designs of fate, and that had decided to follow her on a suicide quest.

And then Cassian happened to be there aside her, on that beach. And she realised he had come back for her several times already: in Jedha, in Eadu, and even in Yavin 4. He had chosen to look for her on Saw's place, rather than save himself since he already got the piece of info he needed from the Imperial defector. He had hesitated to pull the trigger and shoot her father, then risked himself to be killed in the crossfire between Rebels and Imperials just to rescue her, when she was facing the terrible pain of seeing her father again and losing him shortly afterwards, in a matter of minutes. And then he had volunteered and gathered a bunch of Rebel soldiers for her cause. She was not truly used to people doing that.

Her father. Even when time has helped her to overcome the grief about losing her father after finding out he hadn't abandoned her as she once thought, sometimes melancholy would take over and make her long for those times when she was a little girl, living a simple life with her parents. Galen Erso had gotten his revenge from the Empire and she had, in some way, finished what he started. Even though at that moment she was not sure that her message had been received and that the Death Star would be destroyed. She couldn't help smiling at the thought that, even when a Tatooine farm boy had delivered the one-in-a-million shot, her father's love for her had made that flaw possible for the Rebellion to take advantage of.

Great were the Rebellion's losses in that fateful day, on the Battle of Scarif. They were lucky not to be counted among them. And the only way she could think of to honour them was to keep fighting against the Empire.

With her eyes shut, she remembered that day when Cassian and she decided to continue in the fight, together, having recovered from their recent wounds.

"We made it, against all odds. If we keep fighting, there is no guarantee that we will see the end of the fight. We could not survive the next battle. Our chances might be all spent and we could not be back next time. We could die. But first... we will live."

And then he kissed her, softly. With all the strength he could muster from his fully recovered ribs, he embraced her and she no longer hid on her cave. There was no cave at all anymore.

Letting out a deep sigh, she hid her face on his neck and drifted back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this before the hype about Game of Thrones got over me recently due to Season 7 and I'm doing a rewatch after Season 7. I swear I thought of the title but never linked it to Jon and Ygritte before LOL. Maybe it was planted in the back of my mind when I saw those episodes and rooted over Cassian and Jyn lol.


	2. Cassian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU: One-shot story about Jyn and Cassian, with their post-Scarif perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: As I mentioned before, this was supposed to be a one-shot story where Jyn reflects on her near-death experience and the potential for a romantic entanglement for her and Cassian. But then I realised it would be good to include Cassian’s perspective on this short story as well.
> 
> Some songs I’ve been listening that could fit into this narrative:
> 
> Radical Face – “Welcome Home”  
> Muse – “Starlight”  
> Muse – “Neutron Star Collision”  
> Dawes – “When My Time Comes”  
> Sia – “Day Too Soon”
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, material mentioned on this. All rights reserved to Lucasfilm.

"Trust goes both ways"

A contradiction for someone who for long had lived under the "Trust no one. Not even yourself" motto.

Well, that's the life of a spy, isn't it? Working undercover, here and there, using fake identities to develop contacts with different kinds of people, those who can be helpful at one point but can turn you over to the enemy if their interests are compromised. So he had to be a step ahead of them. Even the pill he carried with him was the last resort in order to sacrifice himself to the greater good: The Rebellion.

Everything started back when he was just a little child. Drawn to the fight when he was just a boy, when he lost everything he knew dear and learned the hard way to survive. Maybe that's why he stayed for so long as part of the Rebellion, because they had become the family he had lost. Perhaps that's why he wandered across the galaxy as part of his Intelligence missions, because he had no home where to stay peacefully at. As a matter of fact... He had no place to call home.

But later, he would learn home does not need to be a place. It could be a person.

Turns out his home was now sleeping peacefully by his side, in his arms.

Her face looked so serene when asleep. His vivid green eyes, shut down in the arms of sleep. A face that showed how her owner had endured so much more in her short life than she was expected to. In some worlds, twenty or thirty years alive would be almost considered as being still a child - even for standard humans, twenty-two years-old would mean to be young. And yet, to have lived such a difficult life just for the designs of others seemed totally unfair for Cassian.

But life under the Empire's iron fist was not supposed to be fair at all. Justice was not something one could take for granted in this galaxy. You had to fight for others to have the same privileges only a few ones would enjoy. And this feeling was shared by many. Not only the disgraced ones like him or Jyn. Or others who had lost their family, like that kid from Lothal taken by Phoenix Squadron - was Ezra his name? - or the Tatooine farm boy whose miraculous shot destroyed the Death Star for good. Or those orphaned twice, first taken from their family to go join the Jedi order and then left stranded in a galaxy where the Jedi were supposed to be no more, as Kanan or Ahsoka, the original Fulcrum who had worked with him. There were many others fighting with the Rebel Alliance just because they thought it was right, like the Princess of Alderaan and her father, who was a dear loss to the Rebellion when their planet was obliterated by the Empire with him on it.

He winced, remembering how Jyn and him were almost counted as the casualties taken by the Death Star, and the excruciating pain he was going through. He could still feel the breeze from the sea in front of them, their knees on the sand while they were waiting for the worst to come.

And yet he could not still believe that they made it back. He was ready to sacrifice himself for the Rebellion, and yet he just discovered his end couldn't be better than what he had figured it out before. From all the potential scenarios and near-misses he had faced in the previous years as Fulcrum, he realised that dying there on Scarif, sitting on the sand while holding Jyn in his arms was the most perfect way to die he could have asked for.

He was going to die with a criminal. The daughter of a Imperial scientist, responsible for one of the most terrible weapons the Empire had come out with. And yet, she had an impact on him no one'd had before. Maybe because we were more alike than at first he wanted to admit. He could tell from the moment he allowed her to keep that blaster she snatched from him to take with her to Jedha; or when he ran back to look for her when everything was falling down due to the impact of the Death Star in Saw's hidden base and took her out to safety. Later, when he hesitated to shoot her father, or when he disobeyed orders to go on a suicide mission to follow her, sticking around even when things went bad.

"You might as well be a stormtrooper"

He chuckled by remembering their confrontation in Eadu after they took off stealing an Imperial shuttle. He was hurt when Jyn called him a stormtrooper. First, because it was one of the things he disliked from the Empire, the way all their soldiers were treated as just standard, faceless fighters with no individuality allowed. Since his early years fighting the Republic clone troopers living in a Separatist world like Fest, he despised how soldiers could be treated like disposable pieces of a board game that you can replace easily if one was lost, since they all looked the same! With the Empire was even worse, since those troopers were supposed to be different people from each other and yet, forced to wear the same mask and armour. No place for being unique. And second, he thought Jyn was unfair for being called like a puppet in the hands of his masters doing as told, because all his life had been devoted to the Rebellion, and he clearly understood that sometimes you need to take decisions and make small sacrifices for the greater good. He was so mad by hearing this that he tried to let her know everything he had gone through. But according to the Rebel he would be later sharing a bed with, "he couldn't talk his way out of this".

He sighed, and moved softly to kiss her forehead. He liked to see her sleep, thinking that, even when they were still fighting and knew that they could be gone at any time, perhaps they could have a chance to see the war ended and the Empire overthrown. Then every single sacrifice would be worth it, and they could enjoy a simple life that was so long overdue for both of them. Because they deserved it.

In the mean time, they would be fighting together. And that was enough for his here and now.

He was home.


End file.
